System and method for optimizing response handling time and customer satisfaction scores

ABSTRACT

A system and method disclosed for using and updating a database of template responses for a live agent in response to user communications. The method includes computing an average string distance between each response from a live agent and a template, use to generate the response, modifying the computed average string distance based on a customer satisfaction score associated with each response and selecting a response that minimizes the computed average string distance and maximizes customer satisfaction. Upon receiving a further communication on a certain issue, the system presents a prototype response that has been added to the template database to the live agent for use in generating a response to the further communication that reduces handling time and increases customer satisfaction.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

1. Field of the Invention

The present invention relates to email interactions and morespecifically to a system and method of providing an improved templatedatabase for live agents responding to queries.

2. Introduction

Email and text channels are playing an ever increasing role in customercare. For example, many businesses will utilize a combination ofautomated responses and live customer agent responses to allow customeragents to respond to received communications from users. Typically,these communications are email, but voice and other communications mayalso receive responses from entities using automated approaches or liveagents. Unlike the speech based customer care, email or other channelsoffer advantages of being asynchronous so that the load on anyparticular customer service agent can be balanced, dynamically resultingin cost savings. The success of an email customer care operation can bemeasured by two factors: average handling time and customer satisfactionscores. The average handling time measures the average amount of timespent by an agent answering an email. This metric correlates with thecost of operations. The second metric tracks the customer satisfactionand evaluates on a scale on how satisfied the customer is based on theinteraction.

The objection is to drive the customer satisfaction score higher andlower the average handling time.

Typically, a live agent when responding to a user query will access adatabase of template responses and wherein each appropriate templateaddresses the incoming customer email and may be chosen by the agent.The agent then customizes the template to the particulars of theincoming email. The selection of the template and the amount ofcustomization done to it directly impacts the customer satisfactionscore and the average handling time. In other words, the more customizedan email, the higher the customer satisfaction score and the longer theaverage handling time. What is needed in the art is a method and systemfor improving the customer satisfaction score while lowering ormaintaining a low average handling time.

SUMMARY

Additional features and advantages of the invention will be set forth inthe description which follows, and in part will be obvious from thedescription, or may be learned by practice of the invention. Thefeatures and advantages of the invention may be realized and obtained bymeans of the instruments and combinations particularly pointed out inthe appended claims. These and other features of the present inventionwill become more fully apparent from the following description andappended claims, or may be learned by the practice of the invention asset forth herein.

The present disclosure addresses the above-identified problem ofselecting a response that minimizes the average handling time andsimultaneously maximizes the customer satisfaction scores. Disclosed aresystems, methods and computer-readable media for accomplishing thistask. On aspect of the invention relates to a method of updating adatabase of template responses utilized by a live agent. The methodincludes computing an average string distance between each response froma live agent and a template used to generate the response, modifying thecomputed average string difference based on a customer satisfactionscore associated with each response and selecting a response thatminimizes the computed average string distance and maximizes customersatisfaction.

Another method embodiment of the invention relates to a method ofmanaging email responses by live agents. The method includes calculatinga prototype response or centroid based on a history of live agentsresponding to received communications on a certain issue, using adatabase of templates, handling time for the live agent to generate theresponse, and customer satisfaction data associated with the responses.The method further includes adding the prototype response to thedatabase of templates and upon receiving a further communication on acertain issue, presenting the prototype response to the live agent foruse in generating a response to the further communication. By theapproaches disclosed herein, improved templates may be presented to liveagents which require less customization and which will therefore reducethe average handling time and increase customer satisfaction.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

In order to describe the manner in which the above-recited and otheradvantages and features of the invention can be obtained, a moreparticular description of the invention briefly described above will berendered by reference to specific embodiments thereof which areillustrated in the appended drawings. Understanding that these drawingsdepict only exemplary embodiments of the invention and are not thereforeto be considered to be limiting of its scope, the invention will bedescribed and explained with additional specificity and detail throughthe use of the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 illustrates an example system embodiment;

FIG. 2 illustrates basic components associated with an embodiment of thepresent invention;

FIG. 3A illustrates a method embodiment of the invention; and

FIG. 3B illustrates yet another method embodiment of the presentinvention.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Various embodiments of the invention are discussed in detail below.While specific implementations are discussed, it should be understoodthat this is done for illustration purposes only. A person skilled inthe relevant art will recognize that other components and configurationsmay be used without parting from the spirit and scope of the invention.

With reference to FIG. 1, an exemplary system includes a general-purposecomputing device 100, including a processing unit (CPU) 120 and a systembus 110 that couples various system components including the systemmemory such as read only memory (ROM) 140 and random access memory (RAM)150 to the processing unit 120. Other system memory 130 may be availablefor use as well. It can be appreciated that the invention may operate ona computing device with more than one CPU 120 or on a group or clusterof computing devices networked together to provide greater processingcapability. The system bus 110 may be any of several types of busstructures including a memory bus or memory controller, a peripheralbus, and a local bus using any of a variety of bus architectures. Abasic input/output (BIOS) stored in ROM 140 or the like, may provide thebasic routine that helps to transfer information between elements withinthe computing device 100, such as during start-up. The computing device100 further includes storage devices such as a hard disk drive 160, amagnetic disk drive, an optical disk drive, tape drive or the like. Thestorage device 160 is connected to the system bus 110 by a driveinterface. The drives and the associated computer readable media providenonvolatile storage of computer readable instructions, data structures,program modules and other data for the computing device 100. The basiccomponents are known to those of skill in the art and appropriatevariations are contemplated depending on the type of device, such aswhether the device is a small, handheld computing device, a desktopcomputer, or a computer server.

Although the exemplary environment described herein employs the harddisk, it should be appreciated by those skilled in the art that othertypes of computer readable media which can store data that areaccessible by a computer, such as magnetic cassettes, flash memorycards, digital versatile disks, cartridges, random access memories(RAMs), read only memory (ROM), a cable or wireless signal containing abit stream and the like, may also be used in the exemplary operatingenvironment.

To enable user interaction with the computing device 100, an inputdevice 190 represents any number of input mechanisms, such as amicrophone for speech, a touch-sensitive screen for gesture or graphicalinput, keyboard, mouse, motion input, speech and so forth. The deviceoutput 170 can also be one or more of a number of output mechanismsknown to those of skill in the art. In some instances, multimodalsystems enable a user to provide multiple types of input to communicatewith the computing device 100. The communications interface 180generally governs and manages the user input and system output. There isno restriction on the invention operating on any particular hardwarearrangement and therefore the basic features here may easily besubstituted for improved hardware or firmware arrangements as they aredeveloped.

For clarity of explanation, the illustrative system embodiment ispresented as comprising individual functional blocks (includingfunctional blocks labeled as a “processor”). The functions these blocksrepresent may be provided through the use of either shared or dedicatedhardware, including, but not limited to, hardware capable of executingsoftware. For example the functions of one or more processors presentedin FIG. 1 may be provided by a single shared processor or multipleprocessors. (Use of the term “processor” should not be construed torefer exclusively to hardware capable of executing software.)Illustrative embodiments may comprise microprocessor and/or digitalsignal processor (DSP) hardware, read-only memory (ROM) for storingsoftware performing the operations discussed below, and random accessmemory (RAM) for storing results. Very large scale integration (VLSI)hardware embodiments, as well as custom VLSI circuitry in combinationwith a general purpose DSP circuit, may also be provided.

FIG. 2 illustrates an example system 200 associated with the presentdisclosure. User communication 202 refers to any input communicationfrom the user and is typically an email. User communication may be aquery which is submitted to processing system 204 over a network such asthe internet or a wireless network in a manner known to those of skillin the art. Processing system 204 will communicate with a templatesdatabase 206 and a computing device 208 to which a customer care agent210 interacts. As has been introduced above, in a typical scenario,customer agent 210 will receive the user communication 202 and on acomputing device 208 receive a particular template from templatesdatabase 206 that may be used for responding to the query 202. Becausethe query may have particular questions not specifically addressed bythe template, the agent 210 may modify the response by adding ordeleting words, or moving words around, adding text and so forth. Theresponses communicated from the processing system to the user, at whichpoint a user typically provides a customer satisfaction score whichquantifies the customer's experience.

FIG. 3A illustrates a method of managing email responses by a live agentand in connection with FIG. 2, FIG. 3A illustrates a method includingcalculating a prototype response or a centroid based on (1) a history oflive agents responding to received communications on a certain issueusing a database of templates, (2) handing time, and (3) customersatisfaction (302), adding the prototype response to the database oftemplates (304) and, upon receiving further communications on thecertain issue, presenting the prototype response to the live agent foruse in generating a response to the further communication (306). Addingthe prototype response to the database of templates may further includemanually reviewing the modifying the prototype response template. Forexample, after the system calculates various prototype responses basedon user generated responses, an optimal part in that response on acertain issue such as receiving account balance, technical questionssuch as how to reset your modem, and so forth may be ranked so that thebest prototype response may be identified and templatized. Calculated inthe prototype response may include determining an extent of modificationbetween the selected template by live agent and the response that issent from the live agent to the user. The extended modification may bebased on a string edit distance which involves a measure of at least oneof substitutions, deletions, and insertions of words into the templateto generate the actual response that is transmitted to the user.

FIG. 3B illustrates another method embodiment of updating a database oftemplate responses for a live agent. The method includes computing anaverage string distance between each response from a live agent and thetemplate used to generate a response (310), modifying the computedaverage string distance based on a customer satisfaction scoreassociated with each response (312) and selecting a response thatminimizes the compute average string distance and maximizes customersatisfaction (314). Modifying the computed average string difference mayinvolve decreasing the computing average sting distance based onparticular characteristics of the customer satisfaction score.

Using the principles disclosed herein, the average handling time of anagent will be reduced because the template responses will be improvedbased on previous history and previous responses developed by agents. Inone aspect, each response that is modified from a template will beanalyzed and processed to compute a parameter that may be associatedwith the average string distance between each response and the templateused to generate the response. For example, in one particular area, suchas a user requesting a new password, there may be three templates in thedatabase but ten different responses generated by various agents. Eachof these responses may be processed such that one or more optimalprototype responses may be identified. The prototype responses may begenerated based on a combination of calculation of average stringdistance and modification of that value based on customer satisfaction.Furthermore, in another aspect, the prototype response would representan average of all the responses that were sent out in the past and basedon some of the calculations of string at a distance and customersatisfaction. In this regard, rather than ranking various prototyperesponses as a single prototype response would be generated and modifiedover time as more responses on a particular issue, where they aregenerated from particular templates, are sent by agents.

One aspect of the invention relates to generating and improving aprototype response until a certain threshold is met. For example, thethreshold may be after 20 responses have been generated or 20 responsesthat each individually meet a certain threshold such that the prototyperesponse that is added to the template database may have a sufficientconfidence that it will reduce average handling time and increasecustomer satisfaction more than templates that currently exist in thedatabase. Another variation of this approach involves using responsesfrom the past and clustering them to find a new prototype which wouldreplace the previous templates that were used. A variant of thisapproach is to constrain the search for the prototype by looking in thetemplates that are not useless in the database and constrain them sothat there are prototypes which may be developed which may be far awayfrom the current prototypes or current templates but a completely newtemplate is needed. For example, rather than replacing templates in thedatabase the system may add a template to the database so that they canstill do an improved job inasmuch as the existing templates may handle80% of the inquiries at a satisfactory level but 20% of the inquiriesmay be for subject matter that is fairly distant from the current set oftemplates. In this example, the system would seek to develop acompletely new template for such a matter that is not be adequatelyhandled by current templates and thus the analysis slightly differs fromthe analysis above. The system, in the analysis of the responses, showthat agents are trending toward adding a particular piece of data or asimilar type of response that is not addressed by the current templateset. This may be because of a lack of subject matter in the templates tohandle the 20% of the data that is distant from the existing templatedatabase.

In one aspect, systems may pre-populate templates with data such asname, account number, email address, telephone number and so on. Inorder to properly tailor a prototype response for adding to the templatedatabase, an aspect of this disclosure may relate to whether during theprocess or the conclusion of identifying a prototype response for addingto a template database, performing an additional analysis which involvestesting the template for its consistency and convenience in beingpre-populated with various pieces of data. For example, there may becertain places within the template which would receive pre-populateddata but inasmuch as the prototype response is generated based on otherresponses from agents, there may be further changes that should be madefrom the view point of readability, clarity and so forth whenpre-populated data is inserted. Furthermore, in some cases, inquiriesmay not be categorized or classified into one particular area. Forexample, a user may email and want an account balance and to reset apassword. Where two different categories may be proposed, the agent maycobble together two templates and remove commonalities and then generatea single response. In this regard, statistical analysis may further showa common request for information of several different types in whichcase a system would naturally generate an approved prototype responsewhich can go into the template database under several categories and beretrieved and be presented as an option for an agent in the appropriatecircumstances.

Embodiments within the scope of the present invention may also includecomputer-readable media for carrying or having computer-executableinstructions or data structures stored thereon. Such computer-readablemedia can be any available media that can be accessed by a generalpurpose or special purpose computer. By way of example, and notlimitation, such computer-readable media can comprise RAM, ROM, EEPROM,CD-ROM or other optical disk storage, magnetic disk storage or othermagnetic storage devices, or any other medium which can be used to carryor store desired program code means in the form of computer-executableinstructions or data structures. When information is transferred orprovided over a network or another communications connection (eitherhardwired, wireless, or combination thereof) to a computer, the computerproperly views the connection as a computer-readable medium. Thus, anysuch connection is properly termed a computer-readable medium.Combinations of the above should also be included within the scope ofthe computer-readable media.

Computer-executable instructions include, for example, instructions anddata which cause a general purpose computer, special purpose computer,or special purpose processing device to perform a certain function orgroup of functions. Computer-executable instructions also includeprogram modules that are executed by computers in stand-alone or networkenvironments. Generally, program modules include routines, programs,objects, components, and data structures, etc. that perform particulartasks or implement particular abstract data types. Computer-executableinstructions, associated data structures, and program modules representexamples of the program code means for executing steps of the methodsdisclosed herein. The particular sequence of such executableinstructions or associated data structures represents examples ofcorresponding acts for implementing the functions described in suchsteps. Program modules may also comprise any tangible computer-readablemedium in connection with the various hardware computer componentsdisclosed herein, when operating to perform a particular function basedon the instructions of the program contained in the medium.

Those of skill in the art will appreciate that other embodiments of theinvention may be practiced in network computing environments with manytypes of computer system configurations, including personal computers,hand-held devices, multi-processor systems, microprocessor-based orprogrammable consumer electronics, network PCs, minicomputers, mainframecomputers, and the like. Embodiments may also be practiced indistributed computing environments where tasks are performed by localand remote processing devices that are linked (either by hardwiredlinks, wireless links, or by a combination thereof) through acommunications network. In a distributed computing environment, programmodules may be located in both local and remote memory storage devices.

Although the above description may contain specific details, they shouldnot be construed as limiting the claims in any way. Other configurationsof the described embodiments of the invention are part of the scope ofthis invention. Accordingly, the appended claims and their legalequivalents should only define the invention, rather than any specificexamples given.

1. A method of managing email responses by a live agent, the methodcomprising: calculating, via a processor, a prototype response based on(1) a history of actual responses generated by live agents responding toreceived communications on a certain issue, (2) handling times for thereceived communications, (3) string distances between the actualresponses, and (4) customer satisfaction data, wherein the prototyperesponse is generated using a combination of the actual responses,calculation of an average of the string distances and a modification ofthe average based on the customer satisfaction data and the handlingtimes; adding the prototype response to a database of templates;receiving a further communication on the certain issue; extracting theprototype response from the database of templates; and presenting theprototype response to the live agent to generate a response to thefurther communication.
 2. The method of claim 1, wherein adding theprototype response to the database of templates further comprisesmanually reviewing and modifying a prototype template.
 3. The method ofclaim 1, wherein calculating a prototype response is further based on anextent of modification between a selected template by a live agent forone of the actual responses and the one of the actual responses sentfrom the live agent to a user.
 4. The method of claim 3, wherein theextent of modification is a string edit distance.
 5. The method of claim1, wherein calculating the prototype response is further based onaverage handling time, a string edit distance and customer satisfactionscores.
 6. A system for managing email responses by a live agent, thesystem comprising: a processor; and a computer-readable storage mediumhaving stored therein instructions which, when executed by theprocessor, cause the processor to perform a method comprising:calculating a prototype response based on (1) a history of actualresponses generated by live agents responding to received communicationson a certain issue, (2) handling times for the received communications,(3) string distances between the actual responses, and (4) customersatisfaction data, wherein the prototype response is generated using acombination of the actual responses, calculation of an average of thestring distances and a modification of the average based on the customersatisfaction data and the handling times; adding the prototype responseto a database of templates; receiving a further communication on thecertain issue; extracting the prototype response from the database oftemplates; and presenting the prototype response to the live agent togenerate a response to the further communication.
 7. The system of claim6, wherein adding the prototype response to the database of templatesfurther comprises presenting the prototype response to a live agent formanual review and modification to a prototype template.
 8. The system ofclaim 6, wherein calculating the prototype response further comprisesdetermining an extent of modification between a selected template by alive agent and a response sent from the live agent to a user.
 9. Thesystem of claim 8, wherein the extent of modification is a string editdistance.
 10. The system of claim 6, wherein the calculating theprototype response further comprises calculating the prototype responsebased on average handling time, a string edit distance and customersatisfaction scores.